- If you imagine the primary goal of occupational licensure is to protect consumers, think again [Donald Boudreaux, Ramesh Ponnuru]
- “U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Take EEOC to Task on Background Checks” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen; Seyfarth Shaw]
- Pennsylvania lawmakers consider ending union exemption from stalking laws; Illinois, Nevada and California also shelter them from liability [Washington Examiner]
- “How Disruptive Can an Aggressive NLRB Be in a Non-Union Setting? More Than You Might Think” [Michael Fox]
- “A call for the DOL to fix what is wrong with our wage-and-hour laws” [Jon Hyman]
- Restaurant Opportunities Center, known for staging employee protests, bars own employees from same privilege [Florida Watchdog via Sean Higgins]
- Conference honoring assassinated professor Marco Biagi showcases classical liberal labor law scholarship (or so one would hope) [my comment at Workplace Prof, related call for papers, earlier]
Making “goo-goo eyes” at someone
It’s no longer a specifically enumerated crime to do that on the streets of Houston in an annoying or flirtatious way [Volokh]
“We’ll Change Your Pain Into Rain”
Another survey of late-night TV lawyer ads, this time by 99 Percent Invisible at Slate “The Eye”, and some, like “We’ll Change Your Pain Into Rain,” previously unseen by us. Audio podcast (21:04) here:
And Above the Law highlights this very…. unusual video by an intellectual property lawyer in Houston:
From “Jokes and Targets”
A new book by British humor scholar Christie Davies (via Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal) has a discussion of lawyer jokes, which, Davies says, surged in the 1980s in America in a way not seen in other countries:
…American attorneys in the late Twentieth Century who felt offended by lawyer jokes were trapped, because the television writers and their bosses did not care about the possible hurt feelings of individual lawyers, who for them did not matter, and lawyers’ organizations (which did have power) were only concerned with using television to manipulate public opinion about far more important questions. The rightly saw jokes as utterly insignificant by comparison. The only exception I know happened not in contemporary America but in Britain in the late 1940s, when a senior person from the Law Society was able to persuade the BBC to stop comedians from telling jokes about solicitors (attorneys) who absconded with their clients’ money. The deal was done quietly in that sly, behind-the-scenes British way, paradoxically known as a gentleman’s agreement….
[After rejecting as unreasonable the views of a Pennsylvania lawyer who finds in some American lawyer jokes an “invitation to genocide”:] Likewise, we may dismiss the thesis popular among lawyers that the jokes originated with big corporations, who had them invented to assist in their campaigns against being sued for damages…. jokes belong to the people… they cannot be created by decree, nor can they successfully be repressed…. They are not a thermostat, but they are a thermometer.
What happened in the 1980s especially that might have touched off a popular American interest in lawyer jokes? It’s a mystery! The book can be purchased here, while more about its author is here; David Conway wrote a review for Law and Liberty in 2012, as we noted. (& welcome Above the Law readers)
Equalizing the boys’ and girls’ athletic fields…
…by tearing down the newly built seating on the boys’ side, provided by voluntary parent contributions. What’s important is that things be equalized, and someone had filed a Title IX complaint. “The seating was also not handicapped accessible.” [Plymouth, Mich.; MyFoxDetroit]
House plans hearing on GM ignition glitch
“As a big employer that the government made a big bet on, ‘GM starts off in a position where institutional Washington has to be rooting for it to come through,’ said Larry Kamer, a public affairs strategist who worked in the past for GM and Toyota.” [Washington Post, related] Talk about spotting a dangerous defect that needs fixing…
P.J. O’Rourke on that viral Supreme Court brief
The humorist speaks out on the now-famous amicus filing: “Cato did not ask me to write their brief for the same reason that you do not ask me to perform your appendectomy. … I was asked to read it and give it my endorsement because I am an expert on being run out of Ohio. Ask my mother.” He goes on to give Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus kinder treatment than he does President William Howard Taft. [Daily Beast, earlier, the brief in Susan B. Anthony List v. Steven Driehaus, more on case from SCOTUSBlog]
Sure, officer, what would you like me to say?
Durham police paid undisclosed “conviction bonuses” to informants in drug cases, a practice both prosecutors and defense lawyers say comes as a surprise to them [IndyWeek]
Medical roundup
- Latest don’t-blame-the-regulators shortage of a generic medical supply is nitroglycerin for acute cardiac care [New York Times, ACSH]
- “Does Medical Malpractice Law Improve Health Care Quality?” Maybe not so much [Michael Frakes and Anupam Jena, SSRN via Tyler Cowen]
- “Affordable Care Act opening doors to IT security attacks” [Ponemon via Fierce CIO] “States Barred from Requiring Obamacare Navigators Carry Error and Omission Insurance” [Craig Gottwals, Benefit Revolution] On suspension of statutory dates, Rule of Law has scanty constituency [Ramesh Ponnuru]
- “Video Debate: Richard Epstein and Ryan Abbott on FDA, Off-Label Drug Use” [Bill of Health]
- “Trial lawyers helped FDA with rule opening generic drug firms to lawsuits” [Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner]
- Everyone including the agency itself discontented with FDA’s handling of new sunscreen ingredients [WaPo via Alex Tabarrok]
- Does writing up a more careful patient chart help keep a doctor from getting sued? [White Coat]
FDA rules could block use of brewers’ wastes as animal feed
So long, small-and-sustainable: critics say new Food and Drug Administration regulations implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act could render uneconomic the immemorial practice of using spent beer grains to feed livestock. Both farmers and brewers are upset. [Bangor Daily News/Lewiston, Me., Sun-Journal; proposed rule] More: Glenn Lammi, WLF.